I’ve been exploring Moodle 2.0 RC1 for the last several days. It’s in some ways very difficult to evaluate the release candidate for something that so significantly relies on third party add-ons (modules, plug-ins, themes, what have you) to be a fully functional set-up. But there’s enough there to get a solid idea of how 2.0 compares to 1.9.8, the version used on the MET Moodle server.
But here are some higher level first impressions:
- Look and feel overall: much of the fingerpaint-like interface has been scrubbed up. Nicely, in fact.
- Menus: much better leveraging of javascript.
- Themes: of the relatively few available, I particularly like decaf.
- Front (server) page: might be a bug, but customizing it isn’t as intuitive. But that might be because it offers more flexibility. Still, I would like to be able to add a module to the center column.
- File management: this is the main frustration: the ability to manage files, then build out blocks from the uploaded files isn’t there. Which means I can’t easily manage a course shell by organizing the files/folders system. When you’ve built an entire course site using a CSS purposely located above your individual block files, this is a major pain.
The esthetics of Moodle 1.9.8 have always been the major barrier for me endorsing it: fine for folks whose resource limitations make Moodle the only house on the (lms) block, as it were. But for larger institutions the lack of polish was a dealbreaker.
Oh, and for your amusement:
That might be changing. Might.
